A Jewish mom learning every day; often the hard way.

A different Menorah…

I have had a very frustrating month unable to upload photos. This is only one of many excuses reasons I have not been blogging for so long.

I know, I know: Chanukah is over. For most of you, I would imagine that it is already out of your mind. As my big return, shouldn’t I post something timely and relevant? Probably.

But I really wanted to put up this post, and I can finally do so with photos, so please bear with me, dear readers (all two of you that haven’t given up on me.)

My almost 11-year old daughter came to me about a month before Chanukah declaring that she wanted to make a completely unique menorah this year, as a project – and as a surprise for the family – with just me.

I haven’t had time to blog because I am adjusting to worki

ng full-time, and not adjusting well so far. I don’t have time to breathe, and I certainly don’t have time for special projects! But I have to have time for my daughter…. so we came up with a project together.

ng and gluing or creatively molding or shaping, all of which I don’t do very well.

Daughter decided we weren’t going to buy anything; the challenge was to use what was in the house. SO, this is what we did:

We washed and saved jars from food with relatively similar heights and wide nec

ks. Then, we glued the together, like this:

Next, we filled them with water. In order to make them the same height, I had to eyeball the water to get the levels the same, since the jars are different. (In order for the menorah to be kosher, the candles have to be the same height.)

Then dear daughter had a great time adding food coloring to each jar to create a variety of colors… we had agreed earlier that the shamash would get to be purple.

Then we added the tealights. Despite my husband’s worries to the contrary, they floated beautifully, and didn’t sink once throughout the holiday.

It isn’t a very compact solution, but we had a lot of fun, and the colors looked beautiful. We did reuse materials in our house, and we had our mother-daughter time.

I know it is late, but perhaps this can be filed away for next year…I hope you had a Chanukah holiday full of lights, latkes, love, freedom and family, music and matanot (gifts.)

…I also hope to get to starting blogging again more frequently than once a month.